


Desert Skies

by fouroux



Category: U2
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 06:22:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13335303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fouroux/pseuds/fouroux
Summary: There was something he had meant to do in here, but Edge could not quite recall.Set in 1986.





	Desert Skies

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what's more terrifying: facing an empty .doc page with a blinking cursor or actually posting the trash your brain originally thought was worth sharing. Hello. It's been a while. Again.
> 
> This story is about that one photo Edge took of Bono in the Mojave Desert. You all know the one. However, looking through Edge's photo book I found a (not so?) surprising amount of pictures depicting Larry, all beautifully composed. Most pictures of Bono look like Edge had quickly taken his shot after Anton's, the rest are group photos. Except for that one shot, the one that kicks us all right in the gut.
> 
> This thing is short and confusing. Sorry. I hope you'll like it anyway. Thanks to all the troopers who keep this corner alive and supported me through an entire year of zero writing. I love you and I owe you a lot. Thanks to Ellis for making sense of my nonsense. I love you, too.

There was something he had meant to do in here, but Edge could not quite recall.

Earlier, when they had trotted through the Mojave Desert, looking for the right location – an interesting valley of rocks and hills, a little more sunlight peeking through the wind-blown sea of cotton-clouds – Edge had spotted it from afar. A shed, built out of weather-worn wooden planks, rusty hinges and window frames holding on to dusty shards of glass. It had stood there, in the middle of nowhere, partly inviting, partly a death trap, and Edge had found his boots crunch through the grit and sand before he had even thought about going there.

With his trusty Olympus in his hands, a heavy reassuring weight of technology, both sleek metal and warm leather, he had gone, and he'd had an idea. There was something to find in there, he had reckoned, something worth exploring, and as he had come closer he could hear the wood lament its age and the bits of metal rattle in the wind. Edge had been sure this shed had seen half of America's history gallop by. It had looked like it would rather lay down, simply collapse into a heap of sawdust and nails with the next strong gust, than last another day in the still blazing October sun.

He had heard a voice then. Somewhere in the back, muffled by distance and wind and the sound of gravel, and Edge had hardly looked back. Only raised an acknowledging hand, then ventured inside. There had been an idea, but Edge couldn't quite recall.

They were still too far away to have heard, too far away to have seen, and Edge could only hope for that to be true as he stood in the half-shadows inside the shed, staring out of a broken window. The figures in the distance blurred and the light caught his eye, and maybe that's what he had been after. The sun, the particles flitting through the beams, the bits of glass on the ground acting like prisms reflecting rainbow-coloured shapes on peeling wallpaper, but he wasn't sure once he saw the oval dips moulded in the dirt before him. His breath still came in wheezes.

_“Why him?”_

Larry.

With his puerile smiles and youthful eyes, with his denim jacket and turned up collar. Larry, with his pout and smooth angles, still too soft around the edges. Larry, with his James Dean looks. He was so easy to capture when he wasn't aware, open and laughing, and deadly serious when he was, and Edge couldn't not take a picture of him. In the van, outside with his sunglasses, climbing, strutting, posing. They all wanted to be a little more like Larry, didn't they? Perpetual youth and beauty captured in a single frame. A Dorian Gray without the painting.

_“Did you forget about me?”_

If only he could do as he desired; Edge would waste film after film, abuse the shutter until it wore out, but he could not be so careless. Not ever. Edge would have to do with the leftover shots over Anton's shoulder, when no one saw, when no one paid attention. End up with never quite the picture Edge had envisioned. A second too late, the angle slightly off, and it was frustrating, but it was all he dared to take.

How handsome he had looked, with his black coat and his blue eyes blazing, nipping at Edge's lip with righteous jealousy, and Edge had gone cross-eyed with their noses crushing and chins scraping, until he had sunk away and left Edge breathless.

He had wanted to take a picture then, had reached for his uselessly dangling camera with nervous hands, the shot at his fingertips, and what a photo that would've been. A grainy copy in black and white, with temples and cheekbones painted in ink, his brows soft and eyelashes heavy with sunlight, mouth open in an utter image of adoration and devotion, just along the base of Edge's cock.

He should have dared it, should have captured their affair along with the desert, the hills and the Joshua trees. That look; forever frozen in time, to be developed and hidden, his ears burning at the mere thought of its obscene existence. But he had watched on too long, had gasped and slipped, and then Edge had lost himself. To that needy mouth, the impossible heat, and whatever he had meant to do in here, Edge couldn't quite recall.

Pushing his way past the remnants of a door, Edge found the sky had turned into a grey ceiling with the sun only breaking through in the far distance, dipping a horizon of mountains in gold and orange, and how long had he even been in there? He blinked and stopped to consider the desert sky in the distance, fingers worrying at the leather strap around his neck, and it really was quite a strange phase of his life he found himself in. Most peculiar. Then he turned away.

As he went, Edge didn't look back at the shed creaking behind him in the wind, complaining about the latest scene it had witnessed, and maybe its last. He walked on, the autumn chill of the late afternoon cooling his face, and when Edge got there, fleetingly catching sight of Larry and Adam mulling over premature polaroids while Anton just turned back to his assistants and camera settings, he looked at him. So intense, even from a few feet away, even has he waited, and Edge could make out the echoes of their earlier doings from where he stood. An undone shirt button, lips pinker than they had any right to be, and that air about him. A quiet restlessness.

Maybe it was worth the risk, just this once.

“Bono.”

There it was. That Mona Lisa smile and Peter Pan gaze, their secret glaringly laid bare in the space between them. Love, and nothing else. Edge could only hope his camera could capture such a thing.

 

_Click._


End file.
